


Rebounds

by bryozoans



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: M/M, Mentioned Sagara Sanosuke/Kenshin, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slash, Spoilers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:18:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bryozoans/pseuds/bryozoans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic in which Sano pays Saito a visit, wanting closure, reassurance, and maybe a fight. He gets everything he wants, and maybe some things he doesn't quite expect. (Set during Kenshin's time in the Fallen Village.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebounds

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a year ago (January 15, 2015) and I never got around to posting it. Here you go kids.

“I hate him.” 

These were the first words out of Sagara Sanosuke’s mouth when he appeared in Saito’s doorway, a sack slung over one shoulder and spiky hair hiding his eyes. Saito blew a line of cigarette smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and it swirled through the air, much like a despairing ghost. For a moment, the older man did not speak as his cold eyes scanned every dejected aspect of Sano’s posture, studying him.

“I take that you mean Battosai,” he finally said, taking another drag of his cigarette. He saw Sano visibly tense at the name, his shoulders becoming slightly more hunched. 

Saito knew everything about what had happened. How the Kamiya girl had been killed as part of Yukishiro Enishi’s supposed jinchu to cause Battosai despair. How hard Battosai had taken the loss. How the ex hitokiri was now sulking in a fallen village outside of town, unable as well as unwilling to get up or speak to anyone. To Saito, it was a huge waste of such a worthy opponent, but nothing worth crying over if said opponent was alright with lying down and giving up.

That was not the case with the bird haired fool in front of him. 

He let Sano in, despite his disinclination for visitors, especially at late hours, which was the time frame the idiot had chosen for his talk. He retook his seat at the table in the center of the room, which he had been sitting at before a knock at the door had interrupted his looking over of a couple of files from work. Even when he was not on shift, he disliked being idle, and often took his work home with him for lack of anything productive to do. He folded his hands in front of his face, the ember of his cigarette highlighted by the shadow above it, and sized the fighter up from across the room. The rooster head had barely come in past the door and was now looking around him at what little there was to see. 

Sano was surprised and wasn’t when he looked at the sheer nothingness of Saito’s living quarters. When he had first come up with this magnificent plan of invading the Mibu Wolf’s den for his intents and purposes, there had been all kinds of scenarios he had thought up for what the place would at least look like. He could hardly remember any of them as he looked for something that at least indicated a hobby, anything to distract his attention or betray something personal about the mysterious man sitting at the paper scattered table only a few meters away. 

He shouldn’t have been so hopeful. 

The space hardly looked lived in, as there was dust in every corner and nothing decorating the walls. There wasn’t even a potted plant to suggest loneliness. It was enough to distract him from what he had been thinking about all day, and that was saying something drastic. He didn’t dare to take another step into the place, not for fear of Saito’s disapproval but because he was slightly afraid of disturbing the atmosphere with his simply being there. He wondered if he should leave, just leave without saying anything else, as he stared at an impressive collection of cobwebs in one corner of the empty room. 

That reminded him of why he was here, and he felt a pang of something like pain, but wasn’t, deep in his stomach. He didn’t give it away to Saito’s keen and observing eyes across the room, and simply kept studying the barren walls for something to fix his gaze on. 

As Sano continued to ignore and not at least provide explanation for his arrival, Saito sighed inwardly and stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray on the table. It was hard enough dealing with fools masquerading as his police subordinates for the major part of his day; he didn’t need an emotional one on top of all of the others. Whatever Sano had in store for him had to be extraordinary if it meant he was coming to his sworn enemy about it. Or he was just being a moron and simply wanted to bother him. Either way, if he was just going to stand around staring at the walls, he would have to get rid of the street fighter somehow. For the sake of concentration on his work.

“I punched him,” Sano muttered. Saito’s eyes slid back toward the white-clad man, a new cigarette perched on the tip of his lips and ready to be lit. Sano wasn’t looking around anymore, his gaze hidden back behind his hair, his face angled towards the floor. It did not surprise him that the idiot had done such a thing; idiots were physical by nature, never thinking about what they were doing. Sano kept talking in that muttering, quiet, and almost ashamed voice. 

“I punched him so hard that I knocked him down. And all he did was get up and go back to his place…” 

Saito saw something literally roll through Sano’s body, a shiver possibly caused by regret and revulsion, by the way he was talking about both his and Battosai’s actions. It was pitiful enough to annoy the hell out of Saito. 

“He cared about the girl. What did you expect?” Saito said, pulling a match out of the pack in his pocket and flicking his thumb over the tip to light it.

“I know he cares about Kaoru, okay?! “ Sano yelled, his fist swinging out, the side of it slamming into the wall by the door. While it was not enough of a startle to make Saito drop his match, it was enough to make his thumb miss the phosphorous coated end of the match head. He narrowed his eyes at the fighter, his impatience beginning to wear thin. He popped the match and lit his cigarette before he spoke, ignoring the heavy breaths coming from across the room.

“And that upsets you?” Saito said coolly, breathing in a stream of smoke, letting it settle inside of his lungs. Saito had not missed that Sano still spoke of the girl in the present tense. He could hear Sano’s breath stop for a moment, as if he were surprised. As if he had made a mistake. He heard Sano settle back against the wall, and could sense him looking away. 

“It…” he said softly, and that was all he said for the next several seconds as Saito waited for him to talk, a rare display of patience that he never reserved for idiots of Sano’s level. He skimmed the documents on the table menially, the smoke from his cigarette misting out of his nostrils in a fine cloud. 

“Of course I am…” Sano finally said, his voice once more reserved, his face hidden by his hair, “Kenshin’s not himself. Everyone’s upset by that, almost more than they were saddened by Kaoru’s death…”

Saito almost laughed at the truthfulness of the statement, finding it ironic that such a fool could have such insight on the ignorant ways of the human race, but he did not. Even if he was a cold, cruel, sociopathic bastard, he did not laugh at matters that concerned the dead. Death was not a thing to be taken so lightly. He swept his scattered documents on the table into a pile, straightening them so the margins lined up together. 

“I hate him for that,” Sano said softly, and Saito paused a moment to look at the street fighter, usually so proud and valiant with an exceptional hubris that was bigger than his once intact zanbato. How pitiful he looked, cringing against that wall. Just like Battosai must have been doing right at that moment in the fallen village. 

“So you’re jealous,” Saito said, and it was enough to surprise the idiot out of his lamentation and make him look up from the floor. It was quickly replaced by a look of mixed anger and hesitation, the exact look that gave away his true feelings before he even opened his mouth to defend himself.

“I’m not jealous of anyone,” Sano murmured absently, his eyes set on Saito’s face like a hawk’s. This Saito did chuckle at, and he turned his chair to face the idiot fighter, blowing smoke out of his smirking lips.

“So you’re a fool as well as a liar.” 

He knew Sano was coming for him before he even moved, but he was fast and Saito actually had to pay attention in order to catch the fist that was coming at his face. A bandaged fist smacked squarely into his palm, and he saw Sano wince minutely in pain from the impact jarring his abused and re injured bones, but the moron did not hesitate to send his left in for a quick swipe. Saito caught that one too before it even came close to touching him, holding both fists in his hands as Sano screamed at him, eyes wide with fury.

“I AM NOT A LIAR!” Sano roared as he tried to jerk his hands out of Saito’s hold. He, however, hadn’t needed to break free, because Saito let him go by sending him sprawling to the ground with his own powerful fist. The bag on Sano’s shoulder skidded across the floor from the force, Sano sliding after it and coming to a rest about eight feet away from where Saito still stood, blowing his bangs out of his face with a smoke laced puff of air. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared down at the sorry imbecile on the floor that he had to constantly deal with, his eyes cold but thoughtful.

“You’ve gotten faster,” he said with a removed tone of voice, as if his mind were somewhere else. To Sano, that was probably the closest thing to a compliment he was ever going to get from the ex Shinsengumi. His face hurt from where Saito had socked him in the jaw, and he felt blood starting to well inside of his cheek and dribble out of the corner of his mouth, but he had no inclination to wipe it away. Saito hitting him had wounded him in a way that was not as simple as the cut in his cheek and was much harder to understand, even though he had been expecting it one way or another. His breathing was getting choppy, and he was doing everything in his power to not cry, to not show weakness. What would his captain think of him? 

He sat up slowly, wiping the blood from his cheek, and heard Saito behind him exhale smoke in a steady stream. He let his hair fall into his face and kept it there. He sensed Saito contemplating something to say, the older man’s eyes burning through the aku on his back. 

“Is this what you came here for?” Saito finally said, and he leaned back against the table, studying Sano’s lean form, “You wanted to fight me?”

“I’ve always wanted to fight you,” Sano replied, swallowing the blood that leaked from the wound in the side of his mouth. For a flash of a moment he wondered if Saito would hit him again if he spit on the floor. 

He didn’t take the chance. It wasn’t worth it.

“So you hate me, too,” Saito smirked. 

“It’s not so much hate as being bothered by your attitude,” Sano murmured, running his fingers through his hair. “There’s a little bit of hate in there,” he added after a pause. Saito made some kind of sound that communicated amusement. 

“All of this because of Battosai,” Saito sighed, stubbing his waning cigarette in the ashtray. Sano curled in a little bit on himself at the name again, his hair obscuring his eyes completely in shadow now. 

“Kenshin has nothing to do with this,” he muttered, but it sounded like the obvious lie that it was, and it did not slip past Saito. 

“Your skills of hiding the truth are about as useful as your skills of catching me off guard,” Saito said, a hint of laughter in the undertone of his voice, “Not quite a liar by nature, but you try.”

“Who’s the liar, Fujita-san?” Sano mimicked, glaring over his shoulder. Their eyes met for a brief moment and something in Saito’s made Sano extremely uncomfortable, though he could not name what it was. He looked away quickly. 

“That’s an identity for me, so I won’t be found by any obnoxious visitors,” Saito snorted pointedly, pulling a fresh cigarette out of his pocket, keeping his eyes on Sano’s back the entire time. Sano laughed once, a condescending sound. 

“How selfish of you,” he said, wiping the newer, smaller dribble of blood that had breached the side of his mouth and had started dripping down his cheek once more. 

“Not as selfish as you are for having such feelings toward Battosai and the Kamiya girl’s relationship,” Saito murmured, perching his newly lit cigarette in between his fingers and bringing it to his lips. 

He caught Sano with one hand as the fighter pounced up to swing at him again, teeth gritted in sudden anger. The fist was not as furious, and Saito only gave him a shove to the ground this time instead of a punch to the face. Sano fell on his back and did not move to get up, even as Saito began talking. 

“So you are jealous,” he muttered, narrow eyes narrowing more as Sano’s limbs remained motionless. He could see something move through the idiot’s frame again, could see an internal battle of emotions that would end in seconds. Sano’s jaw was tight and his fingers dug into the floor, his nails leaving light lines on the wood, his body trembling with some kind of extreme stress. Saito almost felt sorry. 

“He said he was too tired to do anymore,” Sano said, his voice tight and an octave higher, “It was as if he couldn’t remember all the lives he saved, couldn’t think about the lives he could still save, all because his Karou-dono died…” He sat up again, his arms shaking with the effort, “He wouldn’t listen to me… He wouldn’t even look at me….”

Saito breathed out a fine cloud of smoke from his nose, watching as Sano began to cry, the distressed kind of crying that he had often seen in the ravaged families of the Bakumatsu, when all of their loved ones had been killed, and they had no where to go. If Sano had looked at him, he would have not believed that the hard lines in Saito’s face had softened, just a little. Sano sniffed, wiping an eye with a bloody sleeve. 

“And when I pulled him up to talk some sense into him, to make him look at me, his eyes showed his soul. Showed that his soul was just as dead as Kaoru…” 

Saito discarded his cigarette in the ashtray, crossing his arms as he listened to Sano’s quite, ashamed sobs. They began to grow in intensity once more, Sano covering his eyes with an arm as his choppy breaths became choppier. 

“It’s like he only cares about her. It’s like he doesn’t notice that I…” 

He suddenly stopped, his shaking also stopping, in fear of what he had said. He began to say something to cover up his sentence, to defend himself, but Saito beat him to it. 

“So you fell in love with Battosai.”

Sano froze under his gaze as he said it, and a pool of shame slowly spread from Sano’s aura, dark blue and heavy, strong enough to be easily palpable to Saito’s keen sense for emotions. Saito stepped toward him, squatting in front of Sano’s hunched and frigid body, his eyes showing no disgust, nor apology towards Sano or his own assumption. 

“… Yes…” Sano whispered, and he swallowed thickly as he said the word, his pool of shame swirling around the both of them. 

“That’s funny. You may be an idiot, but I didn’t take you for an okama,” Saito said, his face staying set. Sano glared at him through spikes of black hair, his eyes murderous. 

“I’m not an okama.” His voice held a tone of seriousness that Saito could have poked at with a stick, just to make the fighter angrier. He didn’t. “Kenshin is special. He’s… Something else. Something beyond a male with pretty hair and a fair face. He’s kind, and valiant, and different…”

“It’s not like I don’t agree with you on some level, fool. I can see how you could be so attracted to something you cannot have.” 

They were both silent for a few moments, Sano withdrawing from Saito slightly, curling into himself once more. Saito’s eyes narrowed. Sano sniffed again, and a few silent tears dripped to the wood of the floor. 

“Dammit,” he whispered, “Just… dammit.” 

“You and Battosai are both selfish and indulgent creatures,” Saito sighed, and Sano realized he had moved closer, and that he sounded almost tired, “Him with his vow to never kill, and you with your greed and jealousy.” 

“Why am I not good enough?” Sano muttered softly, as if he were talking to himself. For a moment, Saito looked as if he had nothing but disdain towards Sano for saying such a childish thing, as if he were annoyed by the constant self pity that the fighter had for himself, and by his gross displays of sadness. But what he did next proved that looks could indeed be deceiving. 

Sano had never been kissed before. Well, not kissed quite like this. It was common sense that the women at the brothels kissed him, but almost never on the lips; they usually nuzzled his neck, or other, far more sensitive places. And this was no endearing kiss, like the rare few he had given to his captain when he was far younger, asking for permission to kiss him on the cheek. His captain entertained his requests often enough, letting him do it when he asked nicely. 

And Sano never could have imagined that Saito’s lips, Saito’s, would be so soft, so pliable, much like that of a woman’s. He would have assumed they be just like the rest of the ex-Shinsengumi; dry, rough, and cold. But his lips were as gentle as a lover’s, applying the correct amount of pressure to be firm but not overbearing. If Sano had closed his eyes, he could have mistaken it for one of his rare fantasies about Kenshin. 

He jerked away and covered his mouth, his face lowered to the ground. His hand trembled as he tried to banish his thoughts of the rurouni’s smiling and pleasant face. 

Saito did not allow him the luxury. 

A large and calloused hand closed around his wrist carefully, mindful of the painful injuries that the mastery of two layers had given him months before, pulling it away from his face. Fresh tears were welling in Sano’s eyes, and they spilled as he glanced up at Saito, his face flushed from the kiss. They stared at each other, two eyes amber, two eyes black. 

“What are you…“ Sano started, but the look in Saito’s eyes silenced him.

“Will you fight me if I do it again, merchant?” Saito asked, his face, as always, giving nothing of what he was thinking away. Sano swallowed and looked down to avoid that gaze, wiping the corners of his wet eyes with a damp sleeve. 

“Maybe,” he murmured, his eyes flicking to look up and then back down again, “Maybe not.”

It was answer enough. Saito attacked him, and Sano really couldn’t think of it as anything but attacking, as he pulled Sano to him by the collar, their mouths colliding, open this time. At first, Sano didn’t like the sensation. The inside of Saito’s mouth was strange and slimy, the taste of smoke and blood from his cheek mixing together to form an unpleasant flavor. His tongue cowered away, afraid, as Saito’s slithered in between his lips and made him jump. He had liked the chaste kiss they had shared a minute before much better. 

Saito liked how soft the boy’s mouth was, how unused. The idiot had no experience with kissing; it was evident in the way he avoided the touch of his tongue. But he still played with him, running his tongue over the roof of his mouth, enjoying the sound of discomfort Sano gave him as the younger man tried to pull away. 

His hand touching the surface of Sano’s stomach was nothing short of a shock. 

“H-Hey,” Sano whispered as he did pull away, his stomach suddenly tense and nervous. 

“What?” Saito asked, his hand hovering over the wrap of bandages. 

“That’s…” he started, and then lost his nerve. He swallowed and tried again, “I don’t want you to…”

“That’s another lie, and you know it.” Saito’s voice was slightly impatient, but not mean, and Sano supposed his own flushed face was giving him away right then, anyhow. He looked to the side, across the floor, as Saito’s hand grazed the very top of the bandages seam, the muscles in his stomach strained from tension and his nerves. He heard Saito exhale curtly.

“If it bothers you so much, you can close your eyes and pretend its Battosai,” he suggested, the tips of his fingers brushing soft skin again. Sano did close his eyes, but he did not envision Kenshin’s hands on him. Not this time. But he didn’t want to see Saito’s face either, and he inhaled shakily as Saito’s hand ran up his stomach to his chest. He tried to imagine a faceless person, but that proved to be more than mildly creepy, so he tried not to imagine anyone and let the sensations swallow him. 

It took only a few minutes for him to moan for the first time as the hands wandered over him, and he suddenly began to wish that his bandages were not wrapped around his abdomen so he could feel the fingers more fully against his skin. He felt faint pressure as Saito pressed against him, his hands tracing ribs and prominent upper abdominal muscles. The brief glimpses of hand against skin revealed that they were dry and more than a little rough from an untold number of battles, but they were gentle and coaxing, and making Sano feel things he almost didn’t want to feel. Never had he felt someone investigating him so thoroughly, as if there was something hidden on him that was of great importance. Or in him. 

He hadn’t thought about how far Saito was going to take this, and he felt the unfamiliar emotion of fear slip into the bottom of his belly, making him slightly sick. He pulled away from Saito’s hands, his breathing heavy. Saito made a sound of disapproval, and fingers touched Sano’s cheek. The young man breathed in, shuddering. He was just so scared… 

Another kiss, this third one softer and not as invasive, reminding him that Saito could be civil and human if he chose to be. To a point, anyway. He felt some of the fear in his belly ease, and relaxed slightly. They both pulled away slowly, and Sano asked. 

“Are you going to…”

“Not unless you tell me not to,” Saito answered him, black eyes low with a mild form of lust and something else that he was just barely covering up, “And I honesty think that you need as well as want this.”

Why did the bastard have to know everything? Sano sighed, and he swallowed for the thousandth time as he gathered courage. 

“Yes…” he murmured.

****** 

It hurt.

It was the weirdest pain Sano had ever felt in his adult life, but that did not make it superior to the other injuries he had sustained during his fight merchant career. 

He didn’t doubt that he would probably never forget it, though. 

Saito was on top of him, inside of him. It was awkward, to say the least, and for some reason Sano kept remembering all the times he had threatened to kill this man, and that that man was now in and around him, hurting him in the strangest way possible, and with his own consent. He could feel that cold substance (long warmed by his body now) that Saito had used on him a few minutes before sliding with the intrusion, easing it along. He’d never before thought that Saito would have anything on hand for a situation like this. He’d never known before that there were things invented for a situation like this. He wondered what else the ex Shinsengumi kept secret behind his aloof visage. 

And the pain he was inflicting was in no way discreet as he pushed to get in further. 

“W-Wait!” Saito gasped, a hand grabbing Saito’s upper arm to stop him. He heard the older male exhale at his plea as he slowed to a halt, but Sano did not feel sorry about making him wait. 

They were both still on the floor, as Saito had decided there was no need to go somewhere more comfortable, and Sano was almost completely unclothed. His rush made Sano think that only his pants were going to get whisked away before Saito had at him, but even his abdominal and calf bandages had been removed by Saito’s agile fingers, exposing as much skin as possible. The only cloth Saito had not removed, for obvious reasons, was the gauze on his right fist. Saito had hardly taken the time to remove his jacket, and Sano felt as if there was a strong sense of metaphor in that somewhere. Something about hiding one’s true self. Scars from all kinds of battles with all kinds of stories had been exposed, and Sano wondered if he would ever be allowed to see the ex Shinsengumi’s own various scars. 

His warm and flushed skin clashed with the cold wood of the floor, and he shivered as sweat began to drip and pool around him. He absently wondered how much dust was going to stick to his back when he got back up, whenever that was. The current situation he was in prevented him from thinking about anything too hard. 

Saito stared down at the boy’s face, which was drawn in pain and discomfort. He was warm, hot, under Saito’s body, and his lean frame tensed every time he moved or made as if he was going to move. He had been slightly surprised by how willingly the idiot had accepted the lubrication process, although it had earned him a couple of very colorful curses from Sano that had him believing the fighter had enjoyed it, if only a little. He began to move again as Sano’s face relaxed a little, making the young man hiss softly. He could feel the muscles in Sano’s body accepting him, and he pushed faster, drawing a louder cry from the man beneath him. 

Sano gasped loudly as something inside was bumped or rubbed, and the blush on his face showed his embarrassment. Here he was, moaning like a corner whore, while Saito hardly made a grunt as he invaded Sano’s body. Something metaphorical most likely in that, too. The friction was becoming less unbearable, and Sano moaned again as Saito pushed further and further. The weird pain began to disappear with the discomfort, and Sano was grateful. A little. 

What he was not grateful for was the way he was beginning to call out, his voice high and lustful, and even if he was not using words, his sounds begged Saito to go faster. He wanted to cover his mouth, to do something with his hands, but his mind was quickly forgetting about wants and focusing on his current needs. 

His need to forget. 

His need to be relieved of all of these breeds of stress.

His need to get off. 

“Saito,” he whined, and he opened his eyes to look up at the only man he would have ever trusted to do this to him. Not even Kenshin held that place in Sano’s heart. 

Saito was no longer slow, and his hands no longer gentle as he grabbed the boy’s hips and thrusted at his own rough pace, Sano’s moans and groans and pitiful whimpers getting to him on a primal level that even he could not fully control. It was in this, not new, but rediscovered animal pleasure that he bit Sano on the soft skin of his shoulder, making the fighter yell, canines piercing skin the slightest bit. 

“Saito,” he moaned, his fingers digging into the floor as he bit his lip and unexpected tears fell down his face, “Saito…”

And then whatever fine line that had been holding him from the edge snapped, and he arched his back violently as invisible claws made of lightning raked over him, his voice trebling as a couple of his fingers clenched and actually broke through the wood of the floor. Pain heightened his sense of awareness as fractured bones scraped against one another in his hurt hand, and never had anything in his very existence felt so good yet hurt so much that he felt the need to run away, fight, and sit quiet and still all at the same time. 

Saito’s orgasm did not seem so spectacular, but if it was, his face did not show it except for the curl of a slight snarl in his lip. He made hardly a sound as he slammed against Sano one last time, as far as he could go.

And then it was over. 

Sano lay on the floor, his head fully reclined against the wood, panting. The aftershocks of his physical release twitched through his thighs, and he felt something wet drip into hidden places between his legs. 

He felt as if he was in a state of slight shock. The only thing that he could compare this feeling too was the aftermath of a few of his brutal past fights, some of which he had been lucky to have come out of alive. He remembered the exhaustion and the tingling of exasperation all through his form from those times, and he wondered how perverted he had to be to compare fighting to sexual release. Considering his past opponents, he decided to not think about the parallelism of it anymore.

Having an orgasm that explosive was borderline dangerous with someone of his muscle power, and that was no boast. The intensity was still so fresh in his mind; aftershocks were making him twitch with embarrassing violence as he tried to regain oxygen he had lost through his screaming. If it hadn’t for the splintered holes in the wood of the floor keeping his hands trapped in place, he seriously doubted he could have kept himself from injuring Saito in some off putting way. A punch to the face in the middle of sex would have been more than looked down upon. 

But now that it was over, he thought he could lie there forever, feeling those sweet afterimages of pleasure amble through him.

It didn’t last.

“You came just with penetration,” Saito’s cursed and oddly pleasing voice intruded into his thoughts. It sounded rustier and more laborious than it had about ten minutes before, “You sure you’re not an okama?”

“Fuck… you…” Sano panted, rolling his head to the side so he could see the older man without lifting his head from the floor. His amber eyes glared with a tired disdain, but still held a spark of sass and fight, and Saito smirked at him. “That… fucking… hurt…”

“Maybe you just like a little pain, then,” Saito said, and his fingers ran absent little circles around the backs of Sano’s knees, making the younger male twitch as overburdened nerves refused the idea of having another overly expending release. He groaned as sore places complained at his sudden jerks of movement, and went to sit up. He was too tired to banter with Saito now, even though he had a whole arsenal of creative things to tell him; he never remembered being this tired after his times with the girls in the brothels. He felt Saito slide out of him (which was all kinds of weird and disgusting at once) and a hand grab an arm to support him as he rolled up, feeling slippery and sticky in all kinds of weird and unpleasant places. 

“I’m tired…” he muttered, and heard Saito buckling his belt. 

Saito did not reply to his announcement, and the older male stood up and went over to the pile of Sano’s clothes. He picked up the articles of white dogi lying scattered and crumpled across the floor, glimpsing an edge of the black aku on the shirt as he quickly folded them with the flick of one hand. He regarded it for a moment before turning back around and squatting down next to Sano, putting the clothes in his hands. 

Sano took them carefully, afraid he was going to drop them. His left hand felt a little bruised, but his right hand was throbbing and hurting like a bitch, especially in the first two fingers. He could just hear Megumi-san asking about what the hell he had done to it this time. That reminded him of what he had done to the floor, and he looked down to see the damage. 

“Shit,” he muttered softly. The profanity got Saito’s attention and he joined Sano in inspecting the floor. A rare look of subdued disbelief and calculating study swept across his hard features as he stared at the messy, splintered holes punched through the floor boards; three on one side, four on the other. It didn’t take a genius to know that it required a lot of force to push mere fingers through solid wood, not to mention at the awkward angle of a flat hand. If he had been a man of more humorous tastes, he would have applauded the spectacle. But here it only reminded him of the raw, wily power shaped like a person that was now sitting naked beside him. 

Sano seemed, rightly, at a loss for words. 

“Sorry about your… Uh, floor,” he finally said after they had both gotten a long, good look. He was embarrassed to no end, but secretly he was in awe of himself at having preformed yet another feat of strength. He felt wasn’t usually conceited, but this was something he felt he had a right to be conceited about. Not that he’d be telling anyone about it soon. Or ever. 

“There’s a futon in the back. I’ll help you get to it,” Saito interrupted Sano’s thoughts. He didn’t seem the least bit worried about the floor as he helped Sano up and led him to a back room where a clean and very inviting futon was lying in a small side room that looked more like a closet, only one window showing the inky black of the night sky. Sano nearly fell face first down on top of it from his standing position, his clothes still in his arms as Saito threw a blanket on top of him. 

“Scream for me if anything bad happens,” Saito said, and Sano could not decipher if it was a joke or something else entirely. He turned towards the doorway to go.

“Saito,” Sano muttered. The older man looked back, his lungs already hankering for an after-sex smoke. The line of Sano’s back glowed softly with the sheen of sweat, his skin moving slowly over his ribs as he breathed. He clenched his left hand slowly, the pressure in his fingertips informing him that severe bruising was going to occur. 

“Yeah?”

Sano said nothing for nearly thirty seconds.

“Never mind.”

******  
Sano was gone in the morning, and Saito was not surprised. He stared at the empty futon, his cigarette bobbing as he bit the end of it. The blanket was neatly folded at the foot of the futon, and an empty roll that once held bandages sat on the small table beside it. There was no note to say where Sano had gone, and Saito had a strong instinct that he would not be seeing the lean fight merchant for a while. He blew out a stream of smoke as he thought about how Sano had asked his name last night, and then had waited a disconcerting amount of time before brushing it off. He had a fair instinct over what that was over, too, but he had no confirmation.

He could not say he was disappointed that Sano had left, but he was not pleased by his abrupt departure, either. He strode across the room and picked the empty bandage roll up, studying it. His eyes fell on the futon again, and he noticed small, faint drops of red dotting its smooth surface. He wondered if Sano’s body was okay.

But more importantly, he wondered if Sano in the idiot’s essence was okay. He thought of Battosai sitting in the fallen village, staring blankly at the leaves on the ground as his mind floated somewhere above the heavens, or most likely below the depths of hell. 

“At least the fool tried doing something about his grief,” Saito muttered, and he crushed the fragile paper roll in his hand, turning to exit the room and go back to work.


End file.
